According to a recent essay in the New York Times, Americans feel pretty awful on Mondays. Google searches for “depression” and “anxiety” are at their highest; searches for “jokes” are at their lowest. But wait: Don’t we seek out laughter when the heavy curtain falls? And isn’t joking our best defense against despair? I’ve always thought so—and I’ve based much of my teaching, and almost all of my academic writing, on that premise. Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, the author of the Times essay, began his research on laughter with a similar assumption: “I thought we used humor to deal with the horror of human existence.”
He found it isn’t so. Not only do we search for jokes less often on Mondays, but we also search for them less often after a traumatic event. (Stephens-Davidowitz uses the Boston Marathon bombing as an example.) Distance from trauma, he notes, is joking’s necessary condition—in the US and around the world.
The higher a country’s infant mortality rate, the less it searches for “dead baby jokes.” In countries with the lowest infant mortality rates, 1 in 180 joke searches is for “dead baby jokes.” In countries with the highest infant mortality rates, about 1 in 1,300 joke searches is for “dead baby jokes.”
It is not clear exactly how to interpret this relationship, since Internet users in developing countries are not a representative sample. But the relationship is so strong, it does at least suggest that some exposure to a horror can substantially curtail jokes about it.
I happened to read these paragraphs just a few hours before I was scheduled to guest-teach a poetry workshop last week. In the workshop, our conversation turned to nursery rhymes, and someone brought up the fact that people suffering from dementia can still often recall, with little effort, lines from Mother Goose. Another student spoke of Gary Glazner’s Alzheimer’s Poetry Project, which encourages Alzheimer’s patients to express themselves creatively. I then did something I don’t usually do anymore: I read a one-line poem from my first book.
ABBOTT AND COSTELLO: THE ALZHEIMER’S YEARS
“Who’s on first? My son? I have a son?”
I used to read this poem a lot because it would reliably get a laugh. The laugh would often take a moment to build; I’d pause and turn the page, at which point the audience would realize the poem was over. Part of their laughter was simply an expression of surprise that a poem could be so short. But I don’t read the poem anymore because I no longer find it funny. My experience with Alzheimer’s in 2016 is different from what it was in 2008. The distance has closed; I’ve curtailed the jokes.
Instead, I linger over accounts of the disease: a profile and essay in the Times, a video diary on Slate. I clip articles concerning the possible memory benefits of seafood, of exercise. I learn what I can about amyloid plaques, about double-blind clinical trials, about assisted living. If I bring up “Abbott and Costello: The Alzheimer’s Years,” it’s only to discuss (in a workshop, on a blog) how I no longer bring it up.
Maybe I’ll find the poem funny again in the not-too-distant future. As the narrator in Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle says, “Pay no attention when I laugh. I’m a notorious pervert in that respect.” Monday draws to a close, five more days pass, and then it’s Sunday (the day, according to Google, of our peak interest in jokes). Here’s another funny thing you can read in Cat’s Cradle: “When I’m dead, I’m going to forget everything—and I advise you to do the same.”